New York, NY - April 29, 2013 - Ten Knight-Bagehot Fellows in economics and business journalism have been named by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the 2013-2014 academic year. They include journalists from The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, American Banker, The Morning Call, National Journal and other news organizations in Washington, D.C., China, Nepal and Ghana.

The mid-career fellowships provide full tuition and a living stipend of $55,000 for experienced journalists to take graduate courses at Columbia's Schools of Business, Law, and International and Public Affairs. Fellows also attend special seminars at Columbia Journalism School led by scholars and business experts during the nine-month program, which begins in August. The program is open to journalists with at least four years’ experience.

“These journalists represent the best and brightest in business journalism,” said Terri Thompson, director of the program. “We look forward to welcoming them for a rigorous program of study here at Columbia.”

This year’s fellows:

Anjali Athavaley, 28, covers commercial real estate for the Greater New York section of The Wall Street Journal, where she started as an intern in 2006. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, she also interned at The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, and the Miami Herald.

Emmanuel K. Dogbevi, 44, is founder and managing online editor of www.ghanabusinessnews.com, an online business news portal in Accra, Ghana, where his special interests are e-waste, renewable energy and economic development. His articles on e-waste dumping in Ghana have drawn international attention to the issue in that country. One of his articles on the topic has been included in a textbook (Cross Currents: Cultures, Communities, Technologies, 1st Edition published by Cengage Learning in 2013). Winner of the Best Anti-corruption Reporter Award of the Ghana Journalists Association in 2012, he holds a BA from the University of Ghana.

Roseanne Gerin, 45, has worked in China since 2007, most recently as senior news editor, China Radio International in Beijing. Previously, she was a staff writer for Washington Technology, a trade magazine about companies that sell IT and telecom products and services to the U.S. government. She holds degrees from Loyola College, Villanova University and Boston University.

Jeff Horwitz, 31, was hired by American Banker in 2009 after graduating from Columbia with an MA in Business Journalism. He has won five SABEW awards at American Banker for investigative and enterprise reporting, and was a finalist for a 2012 Loeb award. He previously worked for the Washington City Paper, the San Bernardino Sun, and Legal Times, and freelanced in East Africa. He has also written stories for Slate, the Washington Post, Portfolio, the Atlantic, The Dallas Morning News and the Sacramento Bee.

Aaron Kessler, 33, is a staff writer for 100Reporters, a nonprofit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C. As a reporter for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, he partnered with ProPublica on an award-winning investigation of contaminated Chinese drywall used in thousands of U.S. homes. He has previously covered subjects ranging from the housing and auto industries, to mortgage fraud, terrorist networks and other financial crimes. He has a BA from Washington University and an MA from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. His work has earned numerous national and regional awards, and he's twice been named a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award.

Prem K. Khanal, 43, is associate editor of Republica English daily in Kathmandu, Nepal, which he joined in 2008 as business editor. Previously, he was the chief of the business bureau at The Kathmandu Post. He graduated with an MA in Economics from Tribhuvan University in 1999 and served briefly as research officer for the Institute for Development Studies in Kathmandu before beginning his 12-year career in journalism. His stories on corruption and the misuse of public funds earned him an Outstanding Performance Award in 2004 from Kantipur Publications, the largest media organization in Nepal.

Margot Sanger-Katz, 33, is health care correspondent for National Journal, the Washington, D.C. politics and policy magazine. A graduate of Yale University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she previously wrote or edited for Concord (New Hampshire) Monitor, Yale Alumni Magazine, and Legal Affairs magazine.

Spencer Soper, 39, is senior business reporter for The Morning Call in Allentown, PA, where he has worked since 2005. Previously, he was a reporter for newspapers in California and New York. He has won numerous journalism prizes, including a Gerald Loeb Award in 2012 for stories that exposed difficult working conditions in an Amazon.com warehouse near Allentown. He graduated with a BA in English from the State University of Albany, New York in 1995.

Peter Svensson, 40, is a technology writer for The Associated Press. Born and raised in Sweden, he has served in the country’s military intelligence and been a U.N. peacekeeper in Croatia. He studied journalism at Stockholm University and photography and multimedia at New York University. His 2007 investigation uncovered how Comcast interfered with subscribers’ Internet traffic, fueling lawsuits and debates over Net Neutrality.

Amy Yee, 38, a freelance journalist based in New Delhi, India, focuses on development, business approaches to reducing poverty and stories with social impact. A graduate of Wellesley College, she got her start in business journalism in 1999 as a reporter for The Financial Times based in New York. In 2006, she moved to New Delhi and covered India for the FT until 2008. As a freelancer, she writes for The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The International Herald Tribune, The Lancet, Forbes and other publications. Two of her articles in the International Herald Tribune were selected as finalists for the US-based South Asian Journalists’ Association award in 2012.

About the Knight-Bagehot Program
Founded in 1975, the fellowships are named for John S. and James L. Knight, brothers who established the Knight Foundation, and Walter Bagehot, the 19th-century British economist and editor of The Economist. They are administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and directed by Terri Thompson, a former associate editor of U.S. News & World Report and former reporter for Business Week. Thompson also is a graduate of the program. Funds are provided by an endowment from the Knight Foundation and by grants from foundations and corporations, which have included The New York Times, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, and Dow Jones & Co.

About the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
For more than a century, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has been preparing journalists in a program that stresses academic rigor, ethics, journalistic inquiry, and professional practice. Founded with a gift from Joseph Pulitzer in 1903, the school offers master of science, masters of arts, and doctor of philosophy degrees. For more on the school, visit www.jrn.columbia.edu.